The ad breaks on Boxing Day (26 December), and kicks off a £28m investment to support the Weight Watchers brand in 2011.
The new ad showcases the WeightWatchers ProPointsplan in a campaign designed to attract and broaden the appeal to the brand’s core target audience of women aged 25 - 55.
It's a time to reflect on the year, enjoy time with family and friends, and pack as much food into your body as possible while lazing on the couch watching the 17th rerun of A Christmas Story. Is it any wonder that a lot of us (especially those of us who can be considered middle-aged) gain weight over the holidays?
While these apps can't do a thing to motivate you to exercise and eat right, they can be valuable wingmen in terms of giving you advice about what to eat, tracking how much you eat and exercise, and giving you a goal to reach. Here are six iOS apps that can help you to go into 2011 with some good habits, knowledge, and a plan to get into shape.
1) LIVESTRONG Calorie Tracker (US$2.99). Probably the best all-around fitness app on the App Store, this universal (runs on iPhone and iPad) app is a way to help you achieve your weight and fitness goals without joining a weight loss program. All you need to do is go to Livestrong.com, a site inspired by Lance Armstrong's Livestrong Foundation, and sign up. Through the app, you can then compare the calories you ingest to your daily goal, see a day by day chart of your weight, search for caloric values for different foods (both raw, packaged, and available at restaurants), and track the number of calories burned in daily exercise. For walkers, runners, and bikers, there's a way to track the distance you've gone and your heart rate. It's an excellent app for those who want to reach a goal without signing up for an expensive weight loss program.
2) Weightbot ($1.99). While this iPhone app from Tapbots is a bit of a single-tasker, it does that task very well. All Weightbot is designed to do is to track your weight and view your body mass index (BMI). Like all Tapbots apps, Weightbot is beautifully designed. If you happen to own a Withings Connected Scale, you don't even need to hand-enter your weight -- your scale will send that reading to the app automatically through the Withings website.
3) Weight Watchers Mobile (free). Designed to work with the Weight Watchers Online program (subscription required), Weight Watchers Mobile is a very complete iPhone application that does a lot. Weight Watchers allows dieters to eat anything, but requires that you track the number of "points" you eat every day. The app has a built-in PointsPlus Tracker for adding meals and snacks to the list, allows you to subtract points for exercising, has a weight tracker for seeing where your weight is on a weekly weigh-in, a PointsPlus Calculator for determining the number of points from nutritional information on packaged foods, and a daily "healthy check" to make sure you're drinking enough water, eating enough fruit, taking a vitamin supplement, and more. There are recipes, articles that are targeted to you (I'm on the Weight Watchers Men's Online plan, so I see hints that are specific to males), motivational success stories, and more.
4) Weight Watchers Kitchen Companion (free). An excellent resource for anyone who wants to learn to "eat right," the Weight Watchers Kitchen Companion iPad app is helpful even if you're not a Weight Watchers member. For free, you get featured recipes, can create custom shopping lists, and have the ability to tap cooking times in recipes to automatically start a kitchen timer. Recipes can be shared over email or with Facebook friends. Weight Watchers Online members get access to many more recipes, special ingredient, shopping, and equipment guides, a Recipe Builder for creating your own recipes, and the ability to send recipes to the Plan Manager (part of the Weight Watchers Mobile app) for tracking points.
5) RunKeeper Pro ($9.99, free Lite version available). I've tried just about every app out there for tracking my walks, hikes, and bike rides, and I've settled on RunKeeper. The app eliminates the need for a standalone fitness tracking device, calculating the distance you've gone, recording the time it took, and creating a track of your route. Both the Pro and Lite versions store your exercise info on the RunKeeper.com website, and it's fun to connect RunKeeper to your Twitter and Facebook accounts for motivational pressure from friends and relatives. Like the Weightbot app discussed above, RunKeeper can be linked to your Withings Scale for automatic tracking of your weight.
6) Fitness HD for iPad ($2.99). Want to bring strengthening or flexibility exercises into your routine? Would you like to have a personal trainer or Yoga instructor, but you can't afford one? Fitness HD has an internal database of over 700 exercises for men and women, along with video instructions for every exercise. There are also 50 Yoga poses in the database, with video and audio instructions. That's not enough? They also have 40 ready-made workouts built in, developed by professional fitness trainers. The app can also let you track calories consumed and burned if you're not already using another app to do that.
Those are my choices for six solid apps for tracking weight and calories or keeping up with your exercise routine (if you have one). Do you have a favorite exercise or dieting app that you can't live without? Share your success story with us in the comments below.
Weight Watchers Kitchen Companion is an attractively designed app that helps you cook lower-calorie recipes every step of the way, interactively timing your recipes, helping you follow along with checklists and showing you videos of cooking techniques while you’re actually preparing the recipe.
The free version of this Weight Watchers Kitchen Companion iPad app is limited, giving you 10 featured recipes and letting you save up to 10 of your favorites. However, if you subscribe to Weight Watchers Online ($17.95 + $29.95 sign-up fee) or use eTools (included with Weight Watchers meetings), this application integrates with thousands of Weight Watchers recipes.
In the unique Recipe Building feature, users can add their own recipes and have the app show how to reduce its caloric content with a PointsPlus system.
Research has shown that when you specifically record the amount you eat into a journal, you can more successfully lose weight. Keeping that in mind, you might want to consider this iPad app to help you with that inevitable New Year’s resolution you’ll be making in January.
For Weight Watchers members, tools that make losing and keeping weight off easier, plus plenty of community support, are absolutely critical.
A new iPad app, the Weight Watchers Kitchen Companion, is designed to deliver both, by combining interactive, hands-on help with low-cal, healthful at-home cooking (from menu planning through shopping and preparation) and providing simple ways to share recipes.
There are two versions of the app on iTunes: One that's free/open-access, but more limited in functionality, and the full-featured version. The latter has been added to the suite of resources available to Weight Watchers Online subscribers ($47.90 for the first month, $17.95 for each month thereafter) and is also part of WW eTools, which are included in the membership fees for consumers who opt to attend traditional meetings. Online subscriber-members now number more than 1 million, according to WW.
Both app versions offer access to the latest 10 featured recipes (all recipes show "point" counts per the daily points system at the heart of the newly launched PointsPlus WW program) and the abilities to save up to 10 favorite recipes, create custom shopping lists, get step-by-step instructions for recipes in the online cooking view, use an online cooking timer embedded in the recipes, watch videos on cooking techniques, share recipes with friends by email or Facebook, and browse through recipes in book view.
The full/paid version also offers access to thousands of WW recipes (including collections recommended by the editors), complete shopping/ingredients/equipment guides, more cooking primers/ techniques videos, use of the WeightWatchers.com Recipe Builder (for creating and editing recipes -- for instance, to reduce the number of "points" consumed by switching ingredients), and ability to send your recipes to your WW "plan manager," a tool for tracking food consumption and activity and exercise levels.
Obviously, iPad owners can use these functions on the go (as in checking points in a recipe while food shopping), and WeightWatchers.com Editor in Chief Theresa DiMasi reports that the Kitchen Companion apps will soon be available for smartphones as well. However, she explains that the thinking behind launching this app first on the iPad was that its large, color graphic display makes it ideal for actually being used in the kitchen while cooking.
"While members of course eat out, and we provide them with ample help to make the right choices in those scenarios, we know that cooking at home facilitates success with the program -- and we also know that many people today don't know cooking basics," DiMasi notes.
WW began offering online tools/memberships about 10 years ago, and has been steadily building/enhancing the offerings since, according to DiMasi -- who notes that while the tools provided for men and women are largely the same, there are separate content areas and editors for the genders, to ensure that topics are relevant.
The WW online community area offers the ability to form groups, share challenges, swap recipes, read about hot message board topics, and create your own blog/read others' blogs (organized by topics like cooking, food, health, fitness, family and love/life. A newly added "What's New" blog, authored by WW staff, offers the latest news about site updates, tool enhancements, special events and tips for getting the most out of online subscriptions.
WW launched presences on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace about a year-and-a-half ago. Fee-based tools and content can be accessed through these, while open-access features include some content (such as a tab devoted to spokesperson Jennifer Hudson, with a blog, videos etc.), along with the usual posting/sharing abilities, offers and quick links to find local meetings or sign up online to become an online or meetings-inclusive member. Facebook fans/likes now number more than 438,000.
